The multidisciplinary biomedical research program at Loyola University Medical Center (LUMC), which includes the schools of medicine and nursing as well as faculty at the adjacent Edward J. Hines, Jr. VA Hospital, are driven by a team and translational approach - basic, clinician and population scientists interacting to insure that knowledge gained from the research bench, patient care and population studies is shared at all levels to provide rapid advances in diagnosis, treatment and prevention. Currently, LUMC is working toward the goals established by a recently completed Strategic Plan that targets a doubling of research productivity in 5 years and a tripling in 10 years. These goals will require a significant investment in medical informatics and bioinformatics. Presently, the information technology (IT) infrastructure available for research at LUMC also serves educational and administrative needs, and is incapable of meeting the rapidly increasing research requirements of our current faculty, not to mention the 60 addition recruitments that are necessary to meet our targeted research growth. This application requests $3.27 M to support the design, construction and fixed equipment purchases required to expand our IT capacity by establishing a new computer facility that will be designated solely for research needs. The proposed renovations, which would create an 840 sq. ft. research computing core in space currently available in the Stritch School of Medicine (SSOM), include minor structural modifications and purchase and installation of 1) a dual-tier raised floor, 2) chillers, 3) in-room Liebert units, 4) a modular uninterruptible power supply system, 5) an emergency power generator, 6) an emergency fire suppression system, 7) physical access controls, 8) twenty-one 42U computer racks with dual power distribution units (PDUs), 9) four fixed data communication switches, and 10) the fiber optic cabling and connectors required to link the new facility to the institution's core data communications network. This renovation will support the extramurally funded research of 39 active principal investigators who depend on adequate computer resources and infrastructure. These investigators have combined active extramural funding of $8.4M for FY10 with an annual request of $7.1M pending during the next 12 months. In addition, the renovation is essential for ongoing and future recruitments. By significantly increasing storage and computational capacity, the core facility will support current faculty whose research includes: clinical studies requiring interactions between our electronic medical record (EMR) and other large databases such as those obtained from large-scale gene expression, protein, and metabolic profiling;genetic/ epidemiological studies that require analyses such as sequence data processing and genotype imputations from sequence data;research utilizing high-throughput imaging technologies that generate large image data sets;bioinformatics approaches that create needs for storage and on-line analytical processing;and health services research that utilizes large national level databases and requires the expanded computer infrastructure to create analysis files, perform statistical analyses, and maintain long-term archives. With respect to timeline, it is anticipated that the final contract document for the renovation will be submitted by January 1, 2011, with the entire renovation being completed by April 1, 2012. The 12 year-old SSOM Building, which will house the facility, is owned by Loyola University Chicago, and the renovated facility will remain a vital part of the research enterprise on campus for at least 25 years. Loyola is committed to providing all additional and recurring costs.